Berlin based artist Maria Zaikina saw my post from last Friday {installation of two little colorful houses in the middle of nowhere}, and thought I might like one of her projects… she was right!

So simple, so pretty, and so… sad? I’m not sure what it is about this project, but it makes me feel a bit blue… and not just because of the gorgeous colors palettes that effortlessly tell the story of passing time. These are just a few of the stills from Maria’s animated film titled “LANDSCHAFT MIT HAUS”, and this is part of her artist statement:

…Melancholic contemplation during a journey is evoked by landscapes drifting past the window, where details merge into stripes and colours. The scenery floats past in front of our eyes, changing our mood or remaining as a background for thought, leaving perhaps just an implicit impression in the memory. Our eyes glimpse a house standing lonely amongst the fields. Is it one house, or different houses in different places that appear to be so similar? Is the house the destination of our journey? The place we long to reach? The future we dream of – or the past we wish to regain? However the composition always remains the same. How then to make the right choice? Is choice important and is it necessary at all?

A-ha! “Melancholic” is the first word in the description… she was trying to make me sad! The sweet, quiet music might be contributing too. Have a look:

Well, hello there. Are you dizzy? Quite the scroll to get down here, wasn’t it!? That’s all thanks to these very looooooooong, very cool images by American artist Frances Berry. They are from her series titled “Memory Extended”. You know I love a good vintage photo, and I love it even more when something contemporary has been done to it!

ps. Check out her portfolio – she has so much good work, and it’s all slightly different. Like these two amazing works on paper, for example:

This is the lovely, and slightly disturbing, work of German artist Loretta Lux. Photographs? Paintings? Both? Well, Loretta is a photographer, but she studied painting at Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich… perhaps that’s why her photographs look like this! Some of these pieces take up to a year to complete, as she begins with a photograph but then digitally manipulates it by striping away the background and then dropping her subjects into these muted, dream-like environments. So pretty, and eery, and lovely, and strange… hey Wes Anderson, I think Loretta just cast your next five films!

ps. She photographs boys too, but there was just something about the girls… love love love!

Gasp! I love these, very, very, very much. All of these dreamy images are from a series, titled “Flying Houses”, by French photographer Laurent Chéhère. {If you happened to be in Paris last fall, you might have seen them on display at Galerie Paris-Beijing – I wish I had been in Paris to see these last fall!} Laurent is an award-winning advertising photographer, who left it all behind to travel the world and pursue his personal work – pulling up roots, and flying off to see the world… hm.

Whoa ~I’m feeling dizzy from thejealousy overload. Ok so, this is the third time that I’ve written about Italian artist TRACCIAMENTI. I love all of her work, but her dress series… well, it kinda kills me. That first one with the rainbow? Neon yellow on black? And that final one above???… LOVE! Oh dear, I might have to sit down for a minute.

{Happy weekend to you all… and if you live in Vancouver, I hope I’ll see you at Gather Pop-up in Gastown!}

Ok, who’s kinda freaked out by this scary cuteness? Me too… but it’s still my favorite kind of cuteness, and clearly Taipei based artist Hsiao-Ron Cheng has mastered it! She uses a combination of pencil, oil paint, mixed media and digital techniques to create these beautiful/weird little scenes… hm, I sure hope that girl’s scarf is going to double as a parachute! Well, at least she’s got a better chance than the bunny girl who just got eaten by a T-Rex. Ouch.

I’m not sure how she does this {photoshop, watercolor, both?} but I like it! Berlin based artist Jennis Li Cheng Tien has a portfolio full of installations, interventions, and sculpture… and then there are these three pieces. Ghostly images married perfectly with the most cheerful color palette a girl could hope for. Gorgeous.